Matthew 22.15-22                                                                                       26 October 2008

“WHERE CHRIST MEETS CAESAR”

Six months ago I asked how you were enduring the ranting and raving, the pos-turing and preening, the bloated promises and skillful skullduggery of this political year. It hasn’t gotten any better since then, now has it? But I do have good news.  In a week all of this sound and fury signifying less than it claims will fade like an echo in a cove. And we’ll wake the next day and find out what we can reasonably expect from our visit to the voting booth the day before. May God grant some-thing good result from all of this rancorous jawboning and orgy of advertising!

I don’t mean to deride the process. Much is at stake. And while I care most about your citizenship within God’s reign, I know that touches also everything you say and do, including your citizenship within our US homeland. Jesus recognized that when, as the politicians sought to trap him between two unacceptable positions, he said, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”  Actually, I prefer the older translation, “Render to the emperor (or Caesar) the things that are the emperor’s.”  I prefer render because the Greek word is not about giving in the sense of offering a gift.  Rather Jesus is talking about rendering in the sense of meeting obligations, like paying our bills, cleaning our walkways at home, or observing the rituals of a republic.

So let’s go there today as we approach the final lap in this lengthy, loud, expen-sive, cumbersome process of electing the next leaders of our nation-state. As followers of Jesus, what are our obligations and duties in these politics? I hope you already know I’m not here to tell you which candidate you should vote for (although I might come close to that in the case of Brad Crowell!). I hope you al-ready know that I consider the church of Jesus Christ getting co-opted by the politics of the left or the right to be a surrender of our holy witness no matter which faith tradition is selling out to which party. I move in more neutral territory.   

Here’s an example.  What if we were to approach the voting booth a week from Tuesday not in the spirit of what’s in it for me, but instead what would make for the common good?  Let me unpack that a little.  One of the most grievous trends afoot today within our land is the raw acquisitive, perpetually self-interested spirit of what’s in it for me?  How can I feather my own nest?  How can I fill my larder? Surely you have noticed this disturbing trend in recent decades.  If not, take in five minutes of Montel, Jerry Springer, or any talk show venue of self-absorption.  C. S. Lewis, in describing what hell is like, spoke of “relentless, unsmiling con-centration upon self, where everyone is perpetually aggrieved” as its surest mark.

It is all too easy to approach the voting booth in this spirit: it’s all about me!  We imagine that while we have worked hard for what we have, unnamed lazy others would take it from us. And our American covenant, which exalts individual rights, distorts into the worst kind of rank selfishness. We imagine no one could possibly have greater struggles than ours. We fail to see others who get hidden from view in the corridors of power, their deeper struggles over which they have no control.

This spirit of entitlement kills impulses of gratitude. This spirit of hyper-individual-ization kills a sense of wider community or common covenant dating back to the Pilgrims crossing the pond for their “errand in the wilderness”.  The Pilgrims knew they couldn’t make it without each other and without their God.  Do we know as much today?  We always need to remember who we are. I like it that we live in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. But do we remain that today, a people gathered by looking out for the common good? In truth, we are not individual hu-man units. We do actually need each other.  Can we better balance individuality and community in our living? What if we as Jesus’ followers were to approach our vote beyond pure personal self-interest and see ourselves as interconnected community instead of an aggregate of individual prosperity units? Maybe the children on the Cape would have a good education, young families would remain here instead of leaving en masse, and the whole community would be enriched.

Or how about this next duty and obligation as Christians who vote, to move my message along.  Sometimes I hear citizen-voters lament hypocrisy foisted upon us as candidates posture in campaigns that muddy the waters as much as clarify them. Of course, finding hypocrisy in political candidates is as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. Or it is as easy as finding hypocrisy in a local church pastor.  Why is that so easy?  Because the level of expectation and degree of scrutiny are extreme to the max! Most of us are never examined like these candidates are.

Frankly, that’s fair, it’s part of the game.  We always need to have our feet held to the fire, to listen thoughtfully, and to get back on track.  But if we accuse others of hypocrisy, we had better clean our own house first.  The truth is the taxpayer-citizen also has his or her own hypocrisy. Except the politicians cannot talk much about our hypocrisy because we would vote the laggards out of office, having the effrontery to speak an unpopular truth right to their constituents. How dare they!

Here’s one I have in mind. I saw a political cartoon—don’t you love the humor of political cartoons—of a big fat chunky US citizen being held up by a tottering, bespeckled civil servant.  The outsized, overstuffed taxpayer on top is scream-ing at the straining, sweating employee below, “Get the government off my back!”

Here’s what the cartoon is going after. Anyone who has worked hard wants lower taxes.  I mean, I do not get the same warm, fuzzy feeling mailing off my quarterly federal and state taxes that I get paying my promise to our DUC budget or capital campaign.  Everyone with an income wants lower taxes and is adamant about it. 

But then the wintertime freeze and thaw comes and potholes emerge come springtime.  Or our grandchild needs special classes for ADD in his public school. Or maybe that same grandchild wants to play a musical instrument in the school band and must sell chocolate bars to learn something so essential as music. All of a sudden, when the services of government are not there for us, we scream foul.  We are outraged.  How dare they not provide these basic benefits for us!

Can you see the hypocrisy? Many of us want low taxes and high services. And that is invisible to us.  Or maybe, we want to pay little, but as soon as our ox is gored, as soon as our program is gutted, we are incredulous.  Yes, government waste is a big problem. OK. But beyond that, we can’t expect public services to be like an orchid, in bloom whenever we look in their direction yet living magically only on air and water.  I don’t agree with George Will on all that much, but he convincingly makes this point over and again to his credit, and we should hear it.

My third duty and obligation for voting Christians centers around accountability. That’s what the Bible is truly talking about when it describes the Last Judgment and any number of little judgments in between: accountability. Accountability is this curious notion that the truth is to be maintained and have its day not just in the charming present as promises are made with a wink, but also over time as the vagaries of life test our convictions. Did we mean what we said and say what we meant? Our Congregational polity, the way we run DUC, does a fine job of holding all of us accountable. This makes us better disciples and a better church. Maybe it’s time we export this accountability, since we know something about it. 

Here is where I am going with this.  In America we have an inordinate interest in the razzmatazz of political candidates, their personalities, and eventual elections.  We follow it in a way not unlike we follow the Red Sox or Patriots.  We constantly check the standings, which are the polls. We listen to talk radio tell of heroes and bums. The elections become like championships. And it’s all really very dramatic.

But then follows the slow, detailed, tedious work of governing.  The grinding out of negotiated legislation and the inching toward compromises with other nations.  And we lose all interest. Candidates run as moderates then govern as ideologues or vice versa! And we the people never so much as peep up and say, “Excuse us, this is diametrically opposed to everything you told us when you asked for our vote! Why did you think you could get away with that?  Who do you think you are? More importantly, who do you think we are?”  After the glare of the media campaign spotlight fades many things transpire in the shades of gray that deeply compromise us. In a word, candidates are no different than the rest of us in that we all need to be held accountable. And our system allows for it. What is key here is to stay as interested and informed as the nation slogs through the heavier work of governance as we were back in the glamor of packaging the candidates.

Think of it, which is more vital, promises made in the political campaign or the actualization of those promises as they translate into positions and policies? The campaign is sexier to us, but the fleshing out of platform into policy rules the day.

My interest today is not so much a civics lesson.  Many of you know a lot more about that than I do.  My interest as your pastor is equipping you as followers of Christ wherever you go, whether school or job, overtime or vacation, family mat-ters or trips into the voting booth.  Our faith makes claims on us wherever we go.

So God bless you as you make your decision.  God bless the homeland we love.  Amen.

Holy God, as high as the heavens are above the earth, so much higher are your ways above ours, as far as the east is from the west, so far are we from treating each other in the image of life as your intended it, and as you would restore our relations. Indeed the glory of your intentions for us exceeds our richest imagining. 

But, Lord, we pray that your reign might come here and now rather than waiting for things to be different after we die. We pray that you would be always be our Lord before Caesar. But we lack the spiritual imagination to envision how you would have us order our common life, treat one another, make and lift up our priorities. Give us creativity to make these translations through our processes in the here and now. And give us the candor and courage to settle for nothing less.

O God, have mercy upon us, who can scarcely comprehend how vast your love is and how surely your dominion advances over all of the earth.  Thank you for standards of truthfulness far surpassing human standards of forgiveness. And as with truthfulness, so also with love, compassion, mercy, endurance and grace.   We pray for our nation at a most critical moment, economically and politically.